Democratic contribution or information for reform? Prevailing and emerging discourses of student voice

While a range of typologies frame and critique the scope, purpose and power relations of different student voice approaches, it is timely to look at the direction that student voice literature has taken in recent years and map dominant discourses in the field. In the article the following questions are addressed: (a) What are the dominant discourses in student voice literature? (b) What are the ways forward, to ensure there is both systemic quality assurance and democratic (if not radical) student participation? The discourses named and interrogated in this article include: governmentality; accountability; institutional transformation and reform; learner agency; personalising learning; radical collegiality; socially critical voice; decolonising voice; and refusal. Consideration is given to the ongoing impetus to position students as consumers and resources for quality control. It is an ongoing concern that student voice projects can miss opportunities for reconfiguring the status of students within democratic schooling partnerships. There is an important role for ongoing and initial teacher education that addresses a politics of voice associated with systemic quality assurance, decolonisation and democracy

Dimensions of Agency in New Generation Learning Spaces: Developing Assessment Capability

In new generation schooling contexts, the interaction of human activity, space, and objects, co- produce spatialised practices. There is the fluid use and continuous re-design of learning spaces, where dynamic socio-material practices support the ongoing and negotiated development of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. Links are forged in this article between spatialised practice and student agency. In Aotearoa/New Zealand there is a national policy impetus for all schools to move towards re-designed learning spaces. School leaders are challenged with a mandate to lead pedagogic change to develop assessment capability, in alignment with the redesign of education facilities. Informed by theories of space, the case study research investigates how school leaders conceptualise student agency within flexible learning spaces. School leader interview data are used to generate dimensions of socio-material agency with consideration given to practice. Assessment practices in flexible learning spaces can enable ‘dialogic’, ‘curriculum’, and ‘spatial’ dimensions of agency. Pedagogical practices that support agency in flexible learning spaces are a focal area for ongoing investigation

Professional Learning on Steroids”: Implications for Teacher Learning Through Spatialised Practice in New Generation Learning Environments.

There is growing interest in innovative educational space design and the relationality of spatialised teaching practices. This paper addresses the characteristics of spatialised professional learning in newly redesigned or purpose built new generation learning environments (NGLE). The case study is situated within Aotearoa/New Zealand context, a country where there has been considerable policy focus and investment in NGLE. Data from principals who have established NGLE in their schooling settings is analysed, with consideration given to the preparation of teachers to take up spatialised practices. The study highlights key characteristics of spatialised PLD practice – fostering spatial literacy; professional cross-pollination; co-teaching and peer coaching; deprivatisation and bespoke professional learning design. The value of this research lies in its contribution to researchers and practitioners in the schooling sector as they consider approaches to professional learning in NGLE

Policy Enactment and Leader Agency: The Discursive Shaping of Political Change

As agents in reform processes, Principals can be pressured to respond to government and private change agendas. Far from merely implementing policy, Principals engage in complex enactments where they demonstrate agency in their interpretations and recontextualisations. Drawing data from Principal interviews, the authors consider leader agency in relation to discourses of economic rationalism, change and change leadership. The operationalisation of schooling reform and the necessity to think critically about policy within limited official consultation frameworks is highlighted. The political control of school clustering can potentially impinge on leader agency, particularly when there are additional hierarchical layers of leadership

Assessment and student participation: 'choice and voice' in school principal accounts of schooling territories

Schooling territories are bounded spaces where policies, bodies, practices, and discourses meet and collide. It is well documented in assessment literature that students who are active decisionmakers understand their learning processes and have the necessary wherewithal to access support across schooling spaces. These spaces are co-produced through interrelationships, where youth participation is associated with power, voice, democratic citizenship, legal entitlement, empowerment, motivation and self-confidence. Recognising the growing pedagogical emphasis on locating students as responsible for their own learning, we consider how assessment practices constitute enabling and constraining schooling territories. Assessment for learning (AfL) can be linked with emancipatory practices in schooling territories where learner agency is co-produced through socio-material classroom relations. We use principal comments to map a range of interrelated schooling territories as a relational cartography of spatialised practices and student participation in AfL. Mostly, these territories are teacher imagined and defined, constructed through schooling and policy frameworks, and determined through the use of student achievement and student voice data. These conceptualised schooling spaces are interrogated to consider the positionality of students within AfL-related territories. While choice and participation may seem emancipatory, we reveal that AfL practices can serve a rarely acknowledged process of affirming territorial power

'Student voice in learning: instrumentalism and tokenism or opportunity for altering the status and positioning of students?'

Student voice literature has been well mapped with a range of participatory frameworks and typologies over the last three decades. These acknowledge neoliberal uses of voice that reflect a pervasive marketised approach to education, where young people are consumers, teachers surveilled, and leaders are wedged between government and community accountability. We draw upon typologies from the field to investigate Principals’ conceptions of student voice in Aotearoa/New Zealand schools. Practitioner awareness of the instrumentalism of particular voice strategies and associated critiques of their application provides alignment with a conception of education as a mode of making explicit social and political practice. The article highlights tensions where systemic improvement is prioritised over student agency and the right of young people to democratic participation in their schooling

Assessment for Learning in the relationality of schooling spaces

Over the last few years there has been intense interest in the physical design of schools. There have been demolitions, with walls removed and spaces conjoined. Factors associated with population growth, the Christchurch earthquake and leaky buildings have led to exciting new builds with consideration given to student agency, curricula and power relations. Transformative shifts to develop Innovative Learning Environments (ILE) in schools and notions of the empowered 21st century learner have resulted in student agency emerging as a critical aspect of schooling. With schooling design influencing a revisioning of spatially influenced pedagogy, it is timely to consider power dynamics and how schooling spaces can enable student agency

Leadership for assessment Capability: Dimensions of Situated leadership Practice for enhanced Sociocultural assessment in Schools

Although there is a growing corpus of literature on teacher assessment capability, less has been written on sociocultural assessment leadership practices with its emphasis on shared capacity building. Expertize in sociocultural assessment that enhances student and teacher learning is an aspect of school leadership that can have a positive influence on teacher practice and student achievement. Research conducted with 38 principals is used to produce 16 dimensions of situated leadership for assessment capability. The article concludes with an argument for a sociocultural conception of situated leadership assessment capability which differs significantly to a clinical competence-based model of assessment leadership

How Can You Foster Assessment Capable Leadership Across Your School?

Assessment practice has changed enormously with student agency and pedagogic voice (student voice about teaching and learning) linked with assessment for learning over the last few years in Aotearoa/New Zealand schools. In this article we share leader voices (with pseudonyms) and findings from our research into dimensions of assessment leadership. These leaders shared deliberate aspects of their leadership practice that focused on leading assessment learning and development in their schools. The following examples of practice and the table detailing the features of 'assessment capable leadership' provide an opportunity to consider what this looks like in your school or Kāhui Ako

Raising the Bar for Teacher Professional Learning and Development? Or Just Cruel Optimism?

The political schooling emphasis on fixed fiscal input and improved student outcomes constitutes a significant challenge for practitioners who are held accountable for the quality of education provision. Professional learning and development (PLD) is a key policy lever for shifting practice in schools and driving philosophical change. In recent years, there have been moves to increase control of both PLD funding directions (the what) and the nature of the service provision (the who), with providers requiring accreditation. This article provides brief commentary on the history of PLD provision and a consideration of whether moves to regulate providers could be another form of 'cruel optimism', a good idea at the time yet in actuality, an obstacle to flourishing